Former Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) came out as the top contender for the next Taipei mayoral race, gaining more than 40 percent support in a latest poll over likely pan-green camp contenders, including lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), director of National Taiwan University Hospital’s department of traumatology.
The poll released by the TVBS TV yesterday found that 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for Lien if he was running against Koo, while 24 percent said they would support Koo.
If Lien was running against Ko, 42 percent said they would vote for Lien, while 32 percent supported Ko, the survey showed.
Lien, who is on a trip to China with his father, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), yesterday maintained a low-key stance when asked if he would run in the seven-in-one municipal elections at the end of next year.
“I am still thinking about it... There are complicated situations to clarify, and I must make a responsible decision,” he said in Hangzhou.
The younger Lien is seen as the most competitive candidate for the pan-blue camp in the mayoral race.
However, he reportedly has been hesitant to commit because of health reasons and memories of a shooting incident at a campaign event in 2010 in which he was shot in the cheek.
He declined to comment on his family’s alleged opposition to his pursuing a political career.
Four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members have declared their intention to seek their party’s nomination for the race.
They are legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Ting Shou-chung (丁守中), and Taipei City councilors Yang Shi-chiu (楊實秋) and Chin Hui-chu (秦慧珠).
It is said that Sean Lien will make public his decision about the Taipei race early next year.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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